A Beginner’s Guide – Forbes Advisor INDIA

Website development is a crucial step for any small business looking to establish an online presence, and you need to get it right. After all, according to statistics, 75% percent of your website’s credibility comes from its design.

The issue is, web development is not an easy skill to learn. There’s a lot that goes into building a website, from programming languages to debugging to deployment. In this guide, we’ll go over some of the basics to help you learn more about the process.

What Is Website Development?

Simply put, website development is the process of creating and building a website. While it can be as simple as putting together a plain text page, in most modern scenarios, it requires the use of complex coding, in-depth web applications and design testing and implementation.

The steps to develop a website might differ depending on the specific project but, typically, the process starts with planning and research. From there, a web developer might work with a designer to create a sketch of what the site should look like. Next is the front-end and back-end development that involves massive use of programming languages.

Once the site is set up, the developer will test it to identify bugs and errors. When all looks good, the developer can then set it up with a hosting provider and deploy it live on the web.

When creating a website, developers need to utilize a number of technical, multidisciplinary skills. They’ll need the ability to solve problems, especially if a piece of coding isn’t working as expected. They’ll also need some creative thinking and design prowess to ensure sites are functional and unique.

What Is Web Design?

Web development and web design are not quite the same thing. While the two professions do have some overlap, web developers typically focus on how things work while web designers focus on how things look. In other words, a developer is responsible for building the structure of a site while a designer is responsible for colors, branding and layout.

Website development generally requires more knowledge of programming languages and web designers might be able to get away with relatively less knowledge. There is web design software that can help you design a website with no coding understanding.

Here’s a closer look at the differences between the two.

3 Types of Web Development

Because web development is such a multidisciplinary field, developers usually specialize in either front-end or back-end development. However, skilled developers may be confident enough to tackle full-stack web development. Here’s a closer look at what these types of web development mean.

1. Front-End Web Development

In front-end web development, the focus is on user-facing parts of the site. Developers code the parts of a site that users see and interact with, including mobile iterations of the site. This is the area of web development that has the largest overlap with small business web design, as both tend to work on user interface (UI) and experience elements. However, it’s front-end developers who bring designers’ ideas to life.

Front-end web developers usually use a mix of three programming languages, which we’ll go into more in-depth below. HTML helps them structure content while CSS allows them to define typography, colors and layout. Finally, JavaScript lets them control the dynamic parts of the page, such as forms, animations and pop-ups.

Additionally, to implement designs, front-end developers have to test and fix bugs that might appear throughout the procedure. It is also essential for them to structure the website with the best SEO practices by improving load times, optimizing schema markup, adding picture tags and prioritizing mobile formats.

2. Back-End Web Development

If front-end development encompasses user-facing features, then you can probably surmise on your own that back-end development focuses on behind-the-scenes features. Users never see this part of a website and for good reason—it’s a confusing array of databases, application programming interfaces (APIs) and programming languages.

Back-end developers make sure that a site is functioning as it should by maintaining and organizing the databases that hold the website’s content. Often, they’ll build these databases from the ground level to up, create queries to help search for specific sections of data and take measures to keep the data secure.

Setting up websites on a server, establishing user authentication and configuring networks and hosting are also part of a back-end developer’s responsibilities.

3. Full-Stack Web Development

Full-stack web development is the combination of front-end and back-end web development. As you might guess, this is a complex field that requires expert developers proficient in a broad range of programming languages and technologies. Full-stack web development needs you to have a thorough grip of the entire development process from all sides.

Because of the level of expertise needed in designing both the front end and back end of a website from start to finish, these types of developers tend to be a jack of all trades.

3 Common Web Development Languages

In website development, you’ll typically be dealing with three main programming languages: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Of course, there are many more than that, but these are the three basics at the core of any site.

1. HTML

HTML stands for “HyperText Markup Language,” and it’s the building block of the web. It’s a markup language that allows you to create and structure all the pages of your site. For instance, it allows you to insert certain elements, such as headers, paragraphs and columns, in whatever layout you want.

There are a few basic pieces of code every HTML document has to have—then the rest of the coding is up to you based on what you want your site to look like. At the top of a document, you’ll want to include <!DOCTYPE html>. This signifies to a browser that the website is coded in HTML. Other essential codes include <html>, <head> and <body>.

To get a better idea of what the HTML would look like for a simple one-page web page, here’s a code snippet.

This webpage would render very plainly, with a generic white background and black text, as that’s the default styling. To make it prettier, you need CSS.

2. CSS

CSS stands for “cascading style sheets.” It’s a language that lets you set a design framework for your entire website (or sites) in one master style sheet. In this sheet, you’ll assign each HTML element with particular attributes. For instance, you can control the background size, font color, color, padding and more.

Let’s consider an example. Say you wanted to make every H2 header on your site have a red background, white font, bolded text and size 14-point font. You would insert a code that looks like this into your style sheet:

The selector you’re assigning attributes to always comes first in the code. Then, it’s followed by curly brackets. Inside these are the declarations you want to make, each with a corresponding value set off by a colon. Each one is then separated by a semicolon.

Typically, a style sheet will have many of these rules—ideally, one for each element of your site.

3. JavaScript

HTML is the building block of a site while CSS styles it. So, where does JavaScript come into play? It’s a language that’s adept at making calculations and manipulating both HTML and CSS code depending on certain variables. This results in more interactive and dynamic features on a webpage, such as interactive buttons, form validation, dropdown menus and image sliders.

All JavaScript code goes directly into an HTML file and starts with the <script> tag. Once you’re finished coding, you’ll close off the code with the </script> tag to indicate the sequence is complete.

Functions are key to JavaScript. These are bits of code that you assign a name to. Then, whenever you use that function name in the rest of your code, it pulls in the saved code automatically so that you don’t have to retype it over and over.

If this all sounds a bit confusing to you, that’s because it is. JavaScript can be more complicated as compared to HTML and CSS as it has more advanced functions that at times can be difficult to code. But here’s a very easy example of JavaScript code and HTML that pops new text onto the page when you click on a button.

Crucial Web Development Terms To Know

If you’re interested in digging into the world of web development, there’s a lot of vocabulary you’ll need. Study these terms to improve your knowledge:

• API: API stands for application programming interface. It’s a set of protocols, rules and tools that allow various software applications to communicate and interact with each other. APIs are essential for creating integrations and sharing data between programs.
• CMS: This stands for content management system, which is a platform that allows users to create, edit and manage website content without requiring any technical knowledge. WordPress and Joomla are two common ones.
• Cybersecurity: Good developers will follow good cybersecurity practices. The goal is to protect all data, networks and devices from hackers. Learn more about cybersecurity.
• Debugging: Debugging is identifying and resolving bugs in code. The process involves analyzing code behavior, making corrections to eliminate all errors and tracing execution.
• Deployment: Deployment is one of the parts of web development when a site is pushed live. For a developer, this might mean transferring database, codes and files from a testing environment to a live server.
• DNS: DNS stands for domain name system. It’s a system that takes an easy-to-read domain name—such as Forbes.com—and translates it into the IP address that computers use to communicate.
• Framework: A framework is a prebuilt set of tools and libraries developers can use when building a site. Rather than compiling their own library of components, developers can use a framework that has all of the basics already defined—allowing them to focus more of their efforts on building unique features.
• Hosting: Your website needs to live on a server that’s always connected to the internet—otherwise, it won’t be online all the time. Hosting refers to renting server space from providers. See our picks for best web hosting services here.
• Wireframe: A wireframe is a tool that is used at the beginning of a site’s creation. It’s a visual representation of how a webpage will look when it’s finished—similar to a blueprint or an outline of layout and functionality.

Bottom Line

As a small business owner, website development probably isn’t something you should try to manage on your own. It’s a skill that can take years to master, so your best bet is to hire a professional who can create a stunning website on your behalf.

Still, it doesn’t hurt to learn the basics of web development. Knowing the basics means you can make tweaks or changes to your site once it’s built without consulting a developer for help. You’ll also have a better idea of the principles of web design so you can make more informed suggestions during the site creation process.

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